A student from MSU called me saying there was a large nest of wasps in her house and one can reach it. After seeing her picture, I told her it was honey bees, but if she really wanted to get rid of them, I could help. I thought it was about 6 ft from the ground and it would be easy since the nest was exposed. All my students decided to join the adventure and learn something about bee removal. Sept 5, 2002. 6:30 pm. *Viewed: 1915 times.
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A closeup of the bee nest. It looked like there would be a good 30,000 workers there (but in the end, my estimate would be about 20,000 max). *Viewed: 2092 times.
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A bit of smoke and bees retreated between the combs. 6:38 pm Viewed: 1813 times.
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I had three students (who were taking my bee course) who volunteered with me: Emily Jackson, William (Nate) Sneller and Bartek Majewski. I modified a nuc box so that bees can be trapped inside when hooked up to a vacuum. The bees are actually located on the 2nd story and we had to stay on a roof, and even then, the best is about 10 ft from us. Viewed: 1701 times.
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We took turns to be the 'bee-vaker' because hands (and neck!) got tired easily. Notice the long handle we put to guide the hose because it is simply too far for the soft vacuum hose to reach the bees. 6:42 pm Viewed: 1486 times.
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And more vacuuming. 6:50 pm Viewed: 1195 times.
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By now we figured we had 80% bees trapped inside the box. 6:54 pm Viewed: 1495 times.
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Nate is brave! Even though he is alergic to bee stings, he still volunteered to be on the roof to cut the combs off so bees would not return the next day. 7:07 pm Viewed: 1456 times.
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